Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id KAA01815 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 9 Feb 2002 10:02:25 GMT X-Authentication-Warning: cheetah.nor.com.au: Host [202.147.129.247] claimed to be green-machine Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.20020209205059.006c1688@pophost.nor.com.au> X-Sender: jeremyb@pophost.nor.com.au X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 20:50:59 +1100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Jeremy Bradley <jeremyb@nor.com.au> Subject: Re: ply to Grant In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F4avjrRZ1UbDBR0000a9c7@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 07:21 AM 8/02/02 -0800, you wrote:
>>Subject: Re: ply to Grant
>>Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 22:35:29 +1100
>>
>>At 07:21 AM 7/02/02 -0800, you wrote:
>>Jeremy wrote
>>Snip...........
>> >>My question was to do with the relative nature of fitness. It is the
>>same
>> >>as my questioning of other subjective dichotomies.
>> >>I hope that I have made myself more clear this time Grant
>> >>Jeremy
>> >>
>>Grant replied
>> >I wrote that reply to someone who remarked on a statement that
>>engineering
>> >cultural change could be worth billions. I even forget who the original
>> >author was. But my point was that this is already happening. Apparently
>>my
>> >remark grated on what appear to be leftist leanings.
>>Snip.............
>>
>>Thanks for your reply grant. I have stored it away in my folder of most
>>interesting posts. But realy does my ecological preocupation make me
>>deserving of your acusation of being "leftist"? And isn't the left/right
>>thing jist another divisive, and subjective, dichotomy?
>>Jeremy
>>
>I'm sorry I appeared to have stuck you in a box, but I was just reacting to
>a single statement that sounded like you condemned capitalists and didn't
>want them agrandized. I'm neither with you nor against you on that score. I
>can see where capitalism has brought us and I can also see what that has
>done to the environment we inhabit. But on the subject of memes, commerce
>spreads memes faster than small groups talking to each other and industry
>invents new memes faster than just about any other group except scientists.
>
>Businesses make up small cultures built around the making and selling of
>products and services. All people in Congress and on Wall Street are
>talking about these days is the unique culture of Enron -- a company that
>had a two-faced set of standards and coerced the people who were supposed to
>regulate it into ignoring their duty to make a quick buck. Now it has gone
>from being a symbol of success to a warning to all companies of how NOT to
>run a business. I don't think the memes that drove Enron will die quickly,
>even thought the company has. Greed is too much a part of human nature.
>But then, what is the difference, really, between greed and selfishness?
>That, too is part of our genetic inheritance.
>
>We (humans) are not the first species to destroy the environment we inhabit.
> Almost every large animal over produces and destroys its habitat
>periodically. Nature's way of dealing with that is to cause the near
>extinction of such animals. It's called the "J" curve and has been seen
>everywhere from petri dishes full of bacteria to islands crowded with deer
>and goats. Cattle in America often overgraze the range they live on and
>have to be culled by humans just to save it from them. The old tales about
>wars between cattlemen and sheep herders was about which animal was going to
>have access to the land. Cattlemen thought sheep destroyed the grass with
>their grazing and left cattle to starve.
>
>In this world of human population pushing that J curve almost straight up,
>we are just doing what every species before us has done. We are overgrazing
>the land we inhabit. The only hope I see for stopping that before we make
>ourselves nearly extinct is to use the memes of culture to spread the word
>there is a better way. Whether we can do that in time to save ourselves is
>the question. When the line on the chart of population increase is going
>straight up, that's the sign we're do for an attitude adjustment. And when
>we are seeing a doubling of population in the lifetime of an individual,
>that charts out at a pretty steep curve.
>
>We can't survive unless we stop being so successful. We have to turn our
>success in a different direction and propagate memes that limit population
>growth and invent new ways to use the land. We must become stewards of it
>instead of consumers. A lot of people will probably have to die before we
>come to grips with the problem. But it is a problem that must engage the
>whole population of earth and not just a few people at the top.
>
>That's my rant for the day. Again, I'm sorry I took your statement as a
>political position rather than a broader viewpoint. It's probably an
>outgrowth of my arguements with the anti-globalism crowd who keep using
>Marxist arguements to support their positions. They're still fighting the
>management-labor wars in a world where labor is rapidly becoming management
>through stock options and retirement plans based on stock ownership.
>
>Cheers, Grant
>
I think I love you Grant
Jeremy
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